A Policeman's Lot
Douglas Kinsley, conscientious objector during wartime, but detective on London’s police force as a civilian engages imagery at metaphor to describe how he is able to sense wrongdoing as an evolutionary skill developed as part of his former occupation:
“It’s being a policeman, I suppose. You come to smell wickedness.”
Trench Warfare
The vivid qualities of trench warfare during World War I that assault all the senses is made palpable through imagery in one memorably gruesome depiction:
“The walls of the trench were crimson with blood, body parts were everywhere and, glancing down at his uniform, Kingsley discovered that he had been showered with what the soldiers called ‘wet dust’, the flying flesh and brains that a moment before had been a part of living men.”
Life During Wartime
The sacrifices that must be made during wartime is also place in perspective. The author engages the famous obsession with tea no matter the situation as the image upon which sacrifice is made made concrete:
“We has one pan, sir, and we also has one old petrol can. So you can have your tea tasting of onions out of the pan or you can have it tasting o’ petrol out of the can. It’s all the same to me, of course, but I thought as how you’d prefer onions.”
Prostitution During Wartime
If the British soldiers are willing to drink tea that tastes like onions in order to satisfy that urging, what sacrifices are they willing to make to relieve more pressing and less easily sated urges? War affects everything and that even extends to the quality of available prostitutes as is made obvious through the imagery of the following description of that particular group. Even the name mentioned is part of the imagery here; it refers not to a particular person, but is rather a collective term for any private in the British army.
“Tired and thin, they were a miserable group indeed. The excessive paint they wore gave them a slightly ghoulish appearance, like marionettes… Tommy Atkins would find little comfort with these poor used-up creatures whose life expectancy was surely not so much greater than his own.”
